One L And The Big J

I'm not going to get too sentimental, like those other sticky valentines. I was in San Diego, not far from here, when I first heard "Alison" in 1976. It's one of those songs. Elvis Costello, shown performing in 2003, won't say who it's about. If you have any doubt about the underlying emotion, listen for the song he twins it with.
Hat tip to No Depression

"We Don't Have Enemies In Politics"

Nathan Fletcher, an Iraq hero, has had enough of the GOP wars. As a California state assemblyman, he was one of the few in his party willing to work on a tax compromise with the Democratic governor. Spurned for the GOP mayoral nomination in San Diego in favor of a tea party regular, Fletcher has left the party to run as an independent. He caught the attention of David Brooks at the New York Times, who reports:

[Fletcher] declared, “I believe it’s more important to solve a problem than to preserve that problem to use on a campaign. I am willing to work or share or give all the credit to someone if the idea is good. I don’t believe we have to treat people we disagree with as an enemy. I’ve fought in a war. I have seen the enemy. We don’t have enemies in our political environment here.”

Fletcher is the decided underdog in the June 5 voting. But he represents a nationally important test case. Can the Iraq and Afghanistan veterans, who were trained to be ruthlessly pragmatic, find a home in either political party? Can center-right moderates find a home in the GOP, even in coastal California? As the two parties become more insular, is it possible to mount an independent alternative?

Named Forever In Two Hearts

I took this photo last year at Fr. Rosecrans National Cemetery on Point Loma in San Diego. Was she born when her father was deployed? It's easy to imagine that scenario, among many others. Those who serve -- all volunteers, today -- often become fathers while on the other side of the world. Imagine the agony of not being able to wrap your arms around your wife, suddenly a grieving mother (or anyone who suffers a loss of any kind while you're away). For all the sacrifices they've made, including the invisible ones, we thank our veterans today.

When Both Roads Lead Home

Steve Bruce, the facilitator of our St. John's Episcopal Church men's retreat this weekend, began by explaining the difference between decision and discernment. Do we want Chevy or Ford, blue or red, steak or fish? Decision. Move your parents into your house or assisted living? Move your family to another state to be closer to loved ones? Accept a promotion when you really love the job you have? These are choices ripe for discernment -- a process of finding the outcome that moves us closer to God and our neighbor, the choice that matches our estimation of what God wants for us.

The right answer can end up being different from what we thought we wanted, at least at first. As Steve described it to us 15 seekers gathered in a circle at a golf resort in suburban San Diego, discernment is different from making a moral choice because we're usually choosing not between right or wrong but between two goods. It's also different from the classic lone-wolf model of American male decision-making, because by definition we can't do discernment by ourselves. God's part of the conversation, of course, but so's the community. Discernment entails putting as much stock in how others see us and our dilemmas as we do ourselves.

AAs (who often are the most spiritually sophisticated among us, since a mature relationship with God has become a requisite of survival) understand this as a willingness to submit themselves to a higher power as well as to regular accountability in a group setting where questions and observations can be severe (if also, usually, loving). Asking for and accepting others' judgment and insights can be scary. It can also be freeing, once we release ourselves to the belief that God and the Holy Spirit have us and all things (even our anxieties, fears, illnesses, broken relationships, joblessness, bankruptcies) well in hand.

We had teaching and discussion sessions Friday night and Saturday morning and evening, and we'll share Holy Eucharist together Sunday morning before heading home. From this summary you may have discerned that Saturday afternoon was set aside for what used to appear on the schedule of overachieving secret napper Richard Nixon as "staff time." I asked a buddy in his 40s when he'd last had a weekend afternoon off. "You mean, just for me?" he said. "I think it was when I was in graduate school."

Meeting up again before dinner, we enjoyed comparing notes on our sabbath time. Four played golf. Others hiked, worked out, played guitar, read, watched football. Several mentioned naps. I bought a bottle of water and followed the magic blue dot on my phone up Penasquitos, through wafts of afternoon BBQing and past houses already ready for Halloween, to a dead-end street called Avenida Maria (guide me, Holy Mother!), where I found a gate leading into the Black Mountain Open Space Park. The hike up a steep, rocky trail through chaparral and fragrant sage liked to kill me. I hoped for an ocean view, but not quite. But I could smell the sea, as you almost always can in San Diego. On the ridge line, I captured this image of discernment -- a fork in the trail, lying before a man with time to kill. Two good choices, surely.

I took the path that led back down to Albertson's, where I bought a loaf of sourdough bread which, standing for the last time in our sacred circle tomorrow morning, we'll consecrate as Jesus Christ's body. Thinking of ourselves as having that authority, freedom, and unity, and resisting the prevailing worldly illusions of scarcity and constraint, may be the most daring discernment of all.

Bruuuuuuuuuuce

I remember going to Tower Records in San Diego in the spring of 1978 and buying "Darkness On The Edge Of Town." I remember speeding home to Clairemont Mesa in my Chevy Vega, taking the album out of the yellow bag, unwrapping it, putting it on my roommate Daniel Shawler's turntable, and listening to it all the way through twice. I remember not liking the lean, angry, even threatening music as much as 1975's towering "Born To Run" and deciding that it didn't matter, because it was Bruce Springsteen's new album, and I'd make it my business to love it, which I did.

Tonight HBO aired a wonderful documentary about the year Springsteen and his colleagues spent in the studio grasping after a sound characterized by what he calls "apocalyptic grandeur." iTunes has just released one of a score or more of previously unreleased songs from the session, "Save My Love," with lots more to come on Nov. 16 (including a song called "The Promise," which sounds amazing, based on the snippets we heard tonight). Springsteen's a canny businessman who's extruded old material in time for Christmas before, and I'm glad, because when there's new music from the greatest rock and roller ever, even when it's old, life is good.

Remembered Soul

Ft. Rosecrans National Cemetery, Point Loma, San Diego

Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

"Greater Than Knowledge": Sermon for 8 Pentecost

When my wife and I offered seats to another couple in an urgent care waiting room in San Diego last week, even as the man moved to accept, he said, "Whatever you want to do," which is a common primal male response. He didn't want to owe us a favor, so he acted like he was doing us one. I've acted the same way whenever I've assumed that there wasn't enough grace to go around. Scarcity thinking afflicts all our relationships and also lies at the root of mass tragedies such as genocide as well as the killing of Jesus Christ. Through the mystery of the feeding of the 5,000 by the Sea of Galilee (which we St. John's pilgrims will visit next week), Jesus offers the radical alternative of abundance. The trick is that nobody -- neither church, government, nor charities -- can be abundant for us. We have to begin by loving God and our neighbor all by ourselves. My Sunday sermon is here.

San Diego Is Nice This Time Of Year, Anyway

My alma mater invites 29,000 rejected applicants to visit campus.